Grace, mercy and peace are yours from God our Father through our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ.

Direct us now, O gracious Lord, to hear aright your Holy Word.
Assist your minister to preach, and let the Holy Spirit teach.
Let eternal life be found by all who hear the Gospel sound.  Amen.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:  

Whenever we take a day to remember a Biblical figure or historical figure, like Martin Luther, there's always a danger that we make it seem as if we're worshiping the person and that is not what we're doing.  We're not worshiping the person.  We're not glorifying the individual.  We are praising God for what he did through that person.  And today as we think about Luke, as we have the encouragement for you to think about Luke and his ministry, that is exactly our focus.  We are focusing on what God has done through Luke for us and for our salvation. 

Luke writes two letters to the same person, Theophilus.  Theophilus is a Greek word meaning “a friend of God,” so whether that's a real person, it could have been a real person or it could just be a personification of all of the Christian Church, we are all friends of God through faith in Jesus Christ, either way he writes this letter to Theophilus so that, as we see in Verse 4:   that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.  Theophilus had been taught something.  The word “taught” there is the word that we use for “catechesis” or “catechism,” the teaching.  Theophilus had been taught but now he can, through Luke’s letter, know with certainty.  So that really is our theme for today:  that you may know with certainty.  

Why was it so unsettling during the time of Theophilus, during the time of Luke?  It was very unsettling because you had this huge shift of everything.  What it means to be a follower of God, and what it means to be a friend of God, there's a huge shift, because after Jesus comes to this world, you don't have to do all those ceremonial laws.  You don't have to wear your clothes a certain way.  You don't have to eat food a certain way.  You don't have to worship a certain way.  You can worship God in your homes as you open up the Scriptures and you speak God's Word to one another.  It doesn't have to happen on Saturday, that day of sacred assembly.  All of those things just get shifted out of the window because they are all fulfilled in Christ.  And that is a huge paradigm shift that took God's people a long time to make that shift.  I don't know how long it took, but I mean, just think of it personally for Peter. 

Peter, like he would know.  He's one of the Twelve.  He was there with Jesus.  He heard Jesus' words, and yet after Jesus ascended into heaven, when God gives him a vision and God says “Here are all of these animals, Peter, kill these animals and eat,” and Peter looks at those animals and says “But Lord, those are unclean animals.  I've never eaten anything unclean.”  So it took some work by the Holy Spirit working through individuals like Luke to give individuals certainty about what it means to be a follower of God.  

And that is important for us today, as well, because we also need that certainty that comes from outside of us.  Being certain about something and being confident about something is not the same as being right about something.  That's true individually.  

A couple months ago with the warm weather, my wife and I and some friends went walking along the beaches of the Kohler-Andrae.  At the Nature Center there, they had a display on fulgurites, which is what happens when lightning hits the sand and creates this little thing.  Fulgurite is what it’s called.  But there was a movie about that in the 90s that my wife and I watched, called Sweet Home Alabama and I was absolutely sure, I was absolutely confident that the main male character in Sweet Home Alabama was Matthew McConaughey.  But it was Josh Lucas.  So we can think we're absolutely confident about something and not be right. 

Now this is true collectively as well.  Have you ever heard of the Mandela Effect?  The Mandela Effect is when people think something is absolutely true that's not true.  For example, the peanut butter.  There's a peanut butter brand, and people are absolutely sure that there is a peanut butter brand named Jiffy but it is Jiff.  We've got Skippy, and we have Jiff, but no Jiffy.  People can be absolutely sure that on a Kit Kat bar, there's a hyphen between Kit and Kat.  So go buy a Kit Kat bar today, because if I put a picture on the screen, you'll say that's AI.  Go buy a kit cap bar today and see there is no hyphen in between Kit and Kat.  People can collectively have a confidence in something that isn't true. 

So Luke, as he is writing, he wants us to have certainty about what happened.  So, as he writes, he makes sure that he talks to eyewitnesses.  He talks to people who were actually there.  He follows things closely.  He doesn't just take things by hearsay.  He follows and investigates things closely, and he writes an orderly account.  He puts it all together in a very thematic way.  John says “If we wrote down everything exactly that Jesus said and everything that he did, there wouldn't be enough books.”  So Luke condenses it, puts it down in an orderly way so that Luke could say this is exactly what happened, so that you would have certainty about what your faith is in. 

You've had that happen.  You've talked to your friend about what happened in the cafeteria, and they say something with absolute certainty that something happened, that there was an explosion, and there were two fire extinguishers employed to solve the problem, and then later on you find out it wasn't an explosion in the cafeteria.  That person wasn't even there.  They had heard it from somebody who had heard it from somebody who had heard it from somebody else.  Luke doesn't want to play a game of telephone essentially, so he interviews the people who were there, who heard the words of Jesus, who saw his miracles, who saw him alive after he was dead, who saw the empty tomb, so that you and I would have certainty.  

That leads us to think about what gives us certainty when it comes to the things of God.  What gives us certainty about what we believe?  Is it how we feel?  You know as well as I do that our feelings are all over the place.  One day we can feel very, very close to God and the next day, our feelings are completely different.  Maybe even the same day, our feelings can go up and down.  That doesn't give us any kind of certainty, does it?  Maybe we look for certainty based off of our performance, like we are we are sure that God loves us and that God forgives us because of how we behave.  But you know very well that you might be doing very well today, but that's no guarantee that you're going to behave well tomorrow, or even later on today.  If we base our certainty on our performance, that God loves us and that he forgives us based on what we do, there is no certainty there.  We will never do enough, and we will never do it perfectly, and we will never do it all the time.  So where do we find the certainty about how God feels about us, and whether we're forgiven? 

It certainly doesn't happen in something we've accomplished in the past, some decision that we made, or some promise that we made.  It certainly doesn't happen by logic and reason, because logic and reason can lead us astray.  For example, I'm just using a simple example, God loves his children.  “My life sucks.  Either God doesn't love me, or there is no God.”  I mean, you can use logic and reason to chase away any kind of certainty you have.  

Certainty comes from a different source.  It comes from the Word of God, coming to you by someone else.  That's what Luke is saying.  “I'm writing all of this down.  I did the work.  I did my homework.  But I have this confidence that this Word that I am sharing with you will give you certainty of what you have been taught, because I am this external person coming to you with that Word.”  Does that make sense?  It's a very interesting thought to think about that God gives a certainty not from within but because someone else speaks God's Word to us. 

You see how we've done that in worship, don't you?  How do you know your sins are forgiven?  Well if you're going in here, it would be reason or motions or performance, and you're going to not find any certainty.  But if somebody comes up here and says, “In the place and by the command of my Lord Jesus, I forgive you all your sins,” that is God’s design to give you certainty.  God has put someone in your life who shares God's Word with you, just like Theophilus had Luke, so that you would have certainty about how God feels about you.  

The same is true in the Lord's Supper.  This is something external, coming to you, where the body and blood together with the bread and wine are given to you, so that you would have certainty that your sins are forgiven, that your God loves you, not based on you, but because of this wonderful proclamation, this external thing coming to you.  It is a wonderful gift that God has given, that he has given us each other, given us pastors and teachers and leaders who are going to share God's Word with us so that we would have certainty. 

This last week, Pastor Enderle and I were at a Pastor's conference and it dawned on me that hearing somebody else preach a sermon and sitting there and thinking, at this moment, at this time, God has put that person in my life so that I would hear the Word of God from him so that my faith, which I have been taught, would have certainty, that I would know more and more that my Father in heaven loves me, that my Savior died for me, that my sins are forgiven, and received the body and blood of Jesus Christ together with the bread and wine from someone else.  That reminder, God loves me, and forgives me, that I am forgiven.  I am redeemed, not just because I say it, but because someone else has said it to me.  This is all part of God's design. 

As Jesus says in Chapter 24 of Luke, “This is what I told you while I was still with you:  Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”  Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.  He told them, “This is what is written:  The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.  You are witnesses of these things.”  He doesn't say to the Twelve Disciples that “You're going to be excellent, eloquent witnesses.”  No, you are going to be witnesses.  God is going to use you as you share God's Word with others to bring repentance and forgiveness of sins to the world.  That's God's plan.  That's how God is going to give certainty, not by making a message that makes sense, not by making a message that feels right, not by making a message that is dependent on anything that you have done or will do or have done, but by his Word, and his Word in sacrament given to you from someone else, by you being the Church sharing God's Word with those around you.  

That's true, isn't it?  That's what God's Word says.  And so oftentimes we don't have confidence in God's plan, do we?  We think, “Well, we have to have this kind of program or that kind of program,” or “I have to say it a certain way,” or “Pastor will say this so much better than I can,” but there are people in your life that need to hear about Jesus and forgiveness.  So oftentimes, we assume forgiveness.  

I know that in my own family, we really had to work hard.  When someone says, “I’m sorry,” we had to say, “Okay, if this is a heart that is actually sorry and it’s not just an ‘excuse me’ kind of sorry but the actual sorry, if someone is sorry that they did something, don’t just leave that sit there but say ‘I forgive you.’”  I’m sure plenty of you have had that uncertainty of saying “I’m sorry” and not having anybody say anything back and not knowing exactly where you stood with them or with God.  We have this wonderful gift to give people certainty that their sins are forgiven.  Their God loves them.  And it works. 

Look at how the disciples come back to Jerusalem.  They're filled with joy.  It doesn't mean they're happy.  I mean they're filled with joy in knowing where their relationship stood with God.  They knew with certainty who Jesus was, because Jesus told them “Everything that was written in the Old Testament (the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms), everything that was written was fulfilled in me.”  They knew who Jesus was.  They also knew their mission—to share this word.  

And so do you.  Be encouraged that God's Word still works.  Use it to offer forgiveness and rest in knowing that God sends sinners this wonderful gift of forgiveness.  The Twelve Disciples, of course, we can find all their sins all over the pages of the Gospel, but God used them as his witnesses, beginning in Jerusalem, so that others would have certainty.  He used them together, as a church, as they shared forgiveness with each other, so that they would have certainty about who their God is, who their Savior is, and what their mission is, and to be encouraged and know how God feels about them and how God forgives them.  Yeah, that's the Gospel of Luke.  I don't know if I made it 20 minutes, maybe a little bit less.  The Gospel of Luke in a nutshell; that you may have certainty about what you have been taught.  Amen.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7) Amen.